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DUMBBELL 


A CASUAL SURVEY OF 
CLOWNS and CLOWNING 


HILER HARZBERG 
ann ARTHUR MOSS 


ew of these pages, have appeared, 
slightly different form, in The Freeman. 


FAINT NOTE OF INTRODUCTION 


Slapstick and Dumbell was, | believe, originaliy intended to be an essay on the 
circus as a whole; but the most vital and enduring factor in the popularity of the circus 
ran away with the idea, and it became a monograph on clowns. 

In Paris particularly, the clown is a figure of importance to all sorts of people. 
In the circus, well known clowns are given star positions on the bill ; many spec- 
tators arrive just in time for their acts and depart immediately afterwards. Not only 
does the clown perform in the circus; he plays music hali engagements; does special- 
ties at smart dance places and all night ‘festivals; entertains children in the big depart- 
ment stores during the holidays. 

If it is now and then fashionable in both France and America to indulge in the 
precious pastime of estimating the universal symbolism and psychological significance 
of the clown, the real and continued enjoyment of clowning is fundamental and non- 
analytical. ‘This is clearly evident in Paris, from the patent pleasure of the street 
mob in some green-wagon entertainment to the sincere delight of the Saturday nighters 
when the Fratellinis play fire-department at the Medrano or Charlie stands on his ear 
at the Cirque de Paris. 

Two virtues the writers may well claim for this discourse on clowning ancient 
and modern. One is a complete freedom from sentimentalizing, which used to be the 
inevitable accompaniment of any interest in clowns as human beings. The other is a 
thorough distaste for those aesthetic maunderings which serve so often to turn a 
healthy appreciation of buffoonery into a languishing intellectual pose. In this case, 


the illustrations as well as the text leave no doubt as to the real gusto of the authors. 


FLORENCE GILLIAM 
Paris, 1924. 


THE GETTY CENTER 
LIBRARY 





In the last year or two there has been a tremendous revival of intellectual ap- 
preciation of such humble entertainers as circus and music-hall virtuosi.. Our youngest 
generation of critics is copying, unwittingly perhaps, the early Eighteen Nineties, when 
under the influence of the de Goncourts, and Toulouse-Lautrec, writers and painters of 
that remote period frequented a small circus on the Rue Benouville in Paris. At the 
moment, we find the critical brotherhood of smart and highbrow magazines in Amer- 
ica rhapsodizing over Charlie Chaplin, the Rath Brothers, Bird Millmann, and other 
excellent jongleurs whose names and deeds have been common property for a decade. 
Our very highbrowest critic gushes about the Fratellinis coincidental with the decor- 
ation of these popular zannies by the French Academy. The mediocre critic is never 
more than a short jump ahead of the academy which in turn is seldom more than ten 


years behind the poor old public. 


The clown has been a pet character of many writers. Too often he has been 
pictured as a combination of imbecilities with no more relation to truth than the popular 
American belief that all Frenchmen above the age of sixteen have mistresses. One 
of the characteristics of the fiction clown is that though he may be crushed under 


some overwhelming personal tragedy, he stoically goes about his daily labors. The 


same may be said of many woolen merchants, bridge-builders, bus-drivers, literary 
critics, gland-experts, and Shriners. Another clown attribute dear to the hearts of 
fictioneers is that the humble zanni is usually a good Shakespearian scholar. This 
bunk has gained in popular belief since the announcement a few years ago that Char- 


lie Chaplin would one day play Hamlet. 


Clowns are people. Extraordinary clowns are extraordinary people ; so too are 
gifted college professors, singers, woodcarvers, physicians, and statesmen, if any. A 
poor clown is as great a bore as a poor dramatic critic, no more and no less. As a 
profession, clowning, by reason of its great antiquity and its vast popularity at all 
times, is as eminently respectable as preaching. ‘That Billy Sunday draws bigger 
audiences than Grock only proves the former’s superiority as a buffoon. The circus, 
whether it be called arena or tabernacle, will always, if it offers a good show, fill the 


pockets of its backers. 


Though strength, skill, and dexterity are important elements in circus entertain- 
ment, the clowns have always been the most popular members of the personnel. They 


represent a phase as old as the theatre itself. 





i 


Drawing by Heuzé 


It is impossible to state with exactitude just when and where the clown came 
into being. It is reasonable to assume that the first clowning was accidental and 
that the first clowns were sublimely unconscious as to just how funny they were. 
Many of them are that way today. Probably during Cro-Magnon days, some would- 
be Strong Man attempted to heave a bear into the air. Up went the animal, but the 
artist was too slow to get out of his own way. So the bear crashed down and 
squashed the poor moron to the delight of his simple-minded companions. The pro- 
fessors assure us that all hearty humor is based on just such pain and discomfort, to 
the other fellow. (Cain clouting Abel over the bean was an uproariously funny joke. 
Cain’s subsequent wanderings over the earth may be interpreted as a long engagement 
to play the Biblical Circuit. This act is the ancestor of all slapstick and custard pie 
comedy.) For many decades the bear act proved extremely popular, until some tribal 
chief discovered that his best fighting men were being ruined in their attempts at 
heavy comedy. So the act was modified and its comic value reduced many calories. 
It is unfortunate that what records we have of the period prior to Ancient Greece, 
deal chiefly with the doings of warriors, rulers, poets, soothsayers, philosophers, priests, 
and other such mortal afflictions. Hardly anything definite is known about the circus 
acts of the ages before the glory of Athens. And even the Greek records on the 
subject are so fragmentary as to allow for little more than speculation. ‘There is a 
passage in the Talmud that points to the existence of clowns in Ancient Judea. It 
relates that a Rabbi one day met Elijah, the wandering spirit of prophecy in Hebrew 
lore and asked who was worthy of eternal life. Elijah pointed to two clowns were 
amusing the bystanders. The Rabbi, a serious fellow, showed great astonishment. 
“Scorn them not”, said the Prophet, “it is always their habit, even when not perform- 
ing for hire, to cheer the depressed and sorrowful. By their merry talk they cause 
sufferers to forget grief.” This Talmudic legend is probably the father of the senti- 
mentality anent the clown’s merriness at all times. “Under his coat of motley his 


heart is bursting with grief”. Chord, please, Professor ! 


The ancient Egyptian god Typhon is believed by some authorities to represent 
the deification of the clown or grotesque. The characteristic traits of all the Typhon 
masques were the huge gross face and the large projecting tongue. It appears to be 
the original of a long series of grotesque faces through Greece and Rome and up 
through the Middle Ages. Thomas Wright in his History of Caricature, traces the 
antiquity of souse comedy. At the religious feasts in early Greece, as the performers 
got more and more liquored up, they became more rowdy, launched nbald insults at 
each other, and burlesqued each other’s sober characteristics. Among primitive peo- 
ples such as the South Sea Islanders, North American Indians, etc., the long historical 
plays and pantomimes got on the nerves of such naive folk. Comic interludes came 
into being in the same way and for the same reason that they were introduced into 
the religious perforrnances of the Middle Ages. In Dr. Karl Mantzius’ History of 
Theatrical Art, that excellent historian says: “At the Polynesian Hura, (family ball) 
when the young girls were tired of dancing, merry clowns came forward and filled 
up the pauses with burlesque capers and gesticulations”. In the direct line of descent 
we have the modern studio dance, where during lulls in the foxtrotting the Life of the 
Party steps out and pulls conscious or unconscious comedy. The ancient Chinese 
were too subtle and over-refined to bother much about clowns. The doings of buf- 
foons are given scant attention in the annals of the Chinese stage. The Japs, imitative 


of neighboring refinements, naturally felt the same way about it. 





Egyptian figure showing typhon masque 


The first definite appearance of the clown or grotesque as an entertainer was on 
the Greek stage of Aeschylus. The word zany is derived from the Greek. The 
heavy sombre tragedies were occasionally relieved by the antics of actors wearing 
comic masques. (This survived to quite a recent period in the ten-twent-thirt melo- 
drama with its relief of the comic oleo.) In the time of Aristophanes, the best joke 
of the clown Hermon was to slam a stick against the skulls of his fellow actors, 


while the comique Parmenon got laughs by imitating the grunting of a hog. 





Scene from an Early Greek Comedy 


The Romans acquired the clown along with many other refinements of Greek 
civilization. Buffoons were in high favor with the Romans and brought comic relief to 
the otherwise dull and heavy banquets. The mandacus or joculator was a clown 
who wore a grotesque masque with a large mouth and protruding tongue ; some- 
what the Typhon make up. He portrayed a gluttonous eater and burlesqued vul- 


garian manners. Suetonius tells of clowns who played in the streets as well as in 


theatres and at private parties. ~The Roman word for clown was sannio. The Eng- 
lish word, clown, (French, cloun) is derived from clunaculum which was a short 
wooden sword employed by the Roman buffoon as a slapstick. The costume was 
often composed of a multitude of little pieces of cloth of many colors called centun- 
culus. (It may be that Joseph’s coat was one of these trick costumes and aided him 
to clown so well as to win high favor with Pharaoh.) Among the Roman clowns 
were four standardized types who were the ancestors of the principal characters of the 
Commedia dell’ Arte. These were Maccus with his low flat forehead, monstrous 
drooping nose, and double hunch on his back, (later, Pulcinella) ; Bucco the jabber- 
ing insolent swaggering parasite, (Arlechinno) ; Pappus the ridiculous old miser, 
(Pantalone); and Dossenus the knavish soothsayer, (I] Dottore). “The sannio enjoyed 
a freedom of speech and action quite impossible in our happy age of censorship. Some 
authorities think the Romans borrowed the buffoon from the Etruscans because of the 
workmanship and character of some of the masques employed. Other authorities em- 
phatically reject this theory for the same reason. Perhaps this violent difference of 


opinion is what makes them authorities. 





Etruscan Buffoon carrying in his left hand what 
was probably the earliest form of slapstick Roman Mandacus (Note Socks) 





Since early Roman days, Italy has been the cradle of fine buffoonery. Back of 
the slapstick, whether it is wielded by Bucco or Arlechinno or Alberto Fratellini, we 


see the fine Italian hand. 


The slapstick has always been the clown’s principal guffaw-fetcher. It is a 
versatile weapon. It ends disputes, silences enemies, and even disciplines wives. It 
is a veritable deus ex machina of all this comic world. It is the most marvelous of all 


dramatic resources. No spoken joke is half so funny as a slapstick wallop. 


With the decline of the Roman Empire, the theatre also slid into a state of 
general debility. About the year 300 A.D. we find records of the Church hurling 
edicts and bans against the buffoons for singing “impure songs’ and condemning their 
drolleries as “diabolic and frivolous”. Evidence of clowns at the court of Attila is 
found in Priscus. Commenting on the embassy from Theodosius II to Attila, he says: 
“A Moorish and Scythian buffoon in turn excited the mirth of the rude spectators by 
their deformed figures, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange 
unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnish languages. The 
hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intem- 
perate riot, Attila alone, without change of countenance, maintained his inflexible 


gravity.” Good picture of a First Nighter. 


We have few records of the diversions of the ancient Teutons and Scandinav- 


ians. The protracted drinking bouts of the long winter evenings offered excellent 


opportunity for singing and story telling. From the amount of hootch which must 
have been consumed on these occasions, we can safely assume that the boys got 
boisterous and pulled a lot of wassail comedy. Evidences also indicate that in the 
chief’s household there usually was a comedian who occupied the position of official 
wise cracker as did Humferth in Beowulf and Sir Kay in the later Morte d’ Arthur. 
It is probable that Roman mimes were cordially received by the Barbarians. There 


are many representations of them in old illuminated manuscripts. 


The most comprehensive evidence we have of the existence of mimes through 
the Dark and Middle Ages is in the records of attacks made upon them from time to 
time by the Church. Countless classic allusions point to the fact that enter- 
tainers were often extremely popular with monks and nuns. At certain periods they 
were in such high favor that they were introduced into religious fetes and even tolerated 


in the churches. 


The Roman clown was introduced into Saxon England. In Anglo-Saxon vo- 
cabularies we find the word mimus appearing as gli mon (gleeman). Glig or glin 
signified any kind of gaiety or play. Illuminated manuscripts reveal that the per- 
formances of these entertainers consisted of juggling as well as clowning. Among the 
peoples conserving the Latin tongue, mimus was replaced by other words serving the 
same idea. Jocus, jocari, joculator, became jeu in French, gioco or giuco in Italian, 
and joker in English. The verb jocare became jouer in French. Joculator was then 
employed in the sense of mimus, and became in French jougleur or jongleur and in 


Chaucer's English, joggelere, (juggler). 





In the ecclesiastical plays of the Middle Ages the clown again appears, usually 
in the role of a comic devil. The chief devil is represented as a grand Prince of Dark- 
ness with the buffoon as a sort of foil, like the low-comedy servant in farce. A 
pitchfork did valiant duty as a slapstick. Practically all the mystery plays were full 
of comic scenes. The secular plays were in the main, farces, and the audiences were 
most interested in the buffoon parts. But the great line of clowns shows principally in 
the Middle Ages in what were called Fool Companies. These were compact organ- 
izations with regular constitutions and as many administrative titles as the Shriners and 
Noble Red Men. The best known company was Les Connards (Cornards, from the 
two horns, cornes, on the fool’s cap), organized in 1541 at Rouen. The earliest of 
the Fool Companies called Les Enfants Sans Souci, was supposed to have originated 
toward the end of the Fourteenth Century and to have lasted till the early part of the 
Seventeenth Century. Founded on the splendid principle that the world was mad 
and all men fools, it played an important part in the life of Paris. It was governed by 


a Prince of Fools. All the members wore the established fool’s costume in public. 


The traditional fool’s dress included a tight-fitting hood with asses’ ears, coxcomb 
and bells ; a coat with long pointed flaps which were sometimes tipped with bells ; 
and long tight trousers. The chief colors were light green and saffron: green 
standing for youth and vigor, and saffron for gayety as the odor of saffron was sup- 
posed to be particularly animating. A\n ornate sceptre was carried and employed as a 


slapstick. Att the time of Francis I, Pontalais was the great fool, high in royal favor. 


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Another famous fool of the period was Jean Serre who excelled in acting comic 
drunks. The work of French fools of this period shows little of the Italian influence. 
It is not till the end of the Sixteenth Century that the French comiques take on the 


appearance of characters of the Commedia dell’ Arte. 


The strolling jongleur of the Middle Ages combined all the attributes of his 
Roman predecessor and added others. Women jongleurs frequently took part with 
the men and with them made grimaces, fell into strange lewd postures, and indulged 
in all sorts of ribaldries. The medieval public’s lack of sentimentality made almost 
everything boisterous. There is some reason for the Belloc and Chestertonian glorific- 
ation of those ribald days. The jongleur’s tricks included rope-walking, dancing, 
magic, purse-cutting, and other directly useful manifestations of skill. Gradually the 
jongleurs passed off the landscape. Their feats of skill and dexterity became the 
properties of the more modern acrobats and jugglers. The singing became the char- 
acteristic of the minstrel. The jongleur had been an extremely important adjunct to 
the life of the period. The Feudal Four Hundred were too often bored out of their 
tin suits with the long-winded recitals of household glories by the family bards. They 
pined for an occasional good old horse laugh. The heavy slapstick of the traveling 
buffoon, comedy that was rough and highly-spiced, made these itinerant fellows 
exceedingly welcome visitors. Through the Crusades, European jongleurs got into 
touch with their Eastern confreres. They found the Oriental Circuit going strong 


and undoubtedly pinched many sure-fire acts. 


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In clowning, as in so many other phases of life, we find the greatest traditionalism 
amongst Orientals. Present day Arab buffoons use a makeup that is hundreds of years 
old: head shaven except for one long tuft of hair, and the face painted in certain 
standardized patterns. The costume is generally a vertically striped loose tunic and 
short breeches. No slapstick is employed but blows are delivered with the cupped 
hand. Control of facial muscles is developped to an amazing degree. When one 
Arab clown strikes another, the swatted one hesitates for several seconds and then 
falls over. This bit of business is known to be many centuries old and is still a never- 


failing laugh getter. 


Late in the Fifteenth Century, the Commedia dell’ Arte came into being. Its 
exact origin is somewhat obscure, but it is generally thought to have evolved from the 
strolling bands of clowns, acrobats, jugglers, and musicians. Whatever its actual in- 
ception, the Comedy of Art was a descendant of the Roman attelana. To give a 
comprehensive account of this important developement is a job which requires profes- 


sorial diligence, a quality possessed by neither of the present writers. 


In the Commedia dell’ Arte, clowning, in the roles of Arlechinno, Pantalone, 
Il Dottore, First Zanni, and Second Zanni, is brought to its highest pitch of clever- 
ness and skill. ‘The heritage of the Comedy of Art has come down to us in a long 
line of superb circus clowns. Improvization, the chief factor in its greatness, is the 
distinguishing quality of the best contemporary clowns. ‘This early Italian buffoonery 
was based on the peculiarities and eccentricities of town councilors, prominent mer- 
chants, and other such petty pisphosh. In Theatre Arts Magazine for October 1923, 
Vadim Uraneff makes an interesting comparison of the buffoons of the Commedia 


dell’ Arte with Charlie Chaplin, Eddie Cantor, Frank Tinney, Jimmy Watts, James 


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Buffoons of the comedy of art 
From an old print 


Barton, and other contemporary American type comedians. Of course these follows, 
with the exception of Chaplin, belong more to the category of comedians, than to 
that of clowns. Probably the best example of a clown on the recent American stage 
was Fred Stone. Graduating from the circus into musical comedy, he carried with 
him a whole bag of typical clown tricks. “The decline of the Commedia dell’ Arte 
came about principally because the boys got upstage. They wanted to appear in 


“regular” plays with lines written specially for them. 


The English clown grew up almost contemporaneously with the Comedy of Art, 
though on the whole English buffoonery was but little influenced by the Italian school. 
The great Elizabethan clown was Dick Tarlton. He died in 1588 when Shake- 
speare was twenty four. There is reason to believe that Tarlton acted with Shake- 
speare in some of the latter’s plays. Tarlton was the buffoon of great versatility. 
He danced, sang, tumbled, and like the characters in the Comedy of Art, made up 
most of his stuff as he went along. Shakespeare objected strenuously to this business 
of extemporizing. It was over this question that he had a tremendous row with his 
principal clown, William Kemp. It may be that Shakespeare was piqued at Kemp's 
hogging of the stage. The great dramatist certainly wasn’t reticent in expressing 
his opinions of clowns. In the rules for the players which Hamlet speaks, he uses 
the following caustic words: “Let those that play your clowns speak no more than 
is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on 
some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though in the meantime, some ne- 
cessary question of the play be then to be considered: that’s villainous and shews a 


most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.” (Hamlet, III, 2.) 


Kemp, incidentally, is the fellow who danced the Morris all the way from Lon- 
don to Norwich, nine days and a hundred miles of dancing with short nightly rests. 


That’s something for Twentieth Century jazz marathoners to think about. 


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Dick Tarlton 
(From a contemporary print) 


The costume of one type of Elizabethan clown has come down to the modern 
circus. It consisted of frizzed out hair, frilled neck ruff, and loose baggy tunic and 


bloomers : it was a burlesque of the dress of the Elizabethan gallant. 


The influence of the Commedia dell’ Arte spread all over Europe. It particul- 
arly flourished in France, partly due to the exhibitions by strolling Italian companies 
and in part to the growth of French organizations. Such an important figure in the 
history of the French stage as Moliére was an enthusiastic admirer of the Comedy 
of Art. His ideal of the clown actor was Tiberio Fiorilli, a famous Scaramuccia 
who became his teacher and instructed him in fine points of Italian buffoonery. 
Moliére’s first real comedy, L’Etourdi, was built upon a scenario of the Commedia 
dell’ Arte. However, in France as well as elsewhere, the comedians soon felt 
themselves too important to indulge in mere improvization and aspired to high 
comedy parts with nice lines written for them by real playwrights. So the true clown 
suffered a period of comparative obscurity and appeared on the scene again chiefly as 


a street performer. 











A German Hanswurst of the late Seventeenth Century 


(From a rare print) 





Eighteenth Century Clowns and Jugglers 


We have seen in contemporary American magazines such droll terms as hans- 
wurst and pickelherring. The clown in Germany, as far back as the days of Martin 
Luther, was called a hanswurst. Later, by way of Holland, pickelherring became 
his nickname. The hanswursts and pickelherrings of the late Seventeenth and early 
Eighteenth Centuries went in for the heaviest kind of slapstick comedy. The hans- 
wurst sticking his finger in the pickelherring’s eye, and the latter booting the former 
abaft of his main hatch, were the ancestors of a long line of German buffoons lead- 
ing down to our own Weber and Fields. In their music hall days, Weber and Fields 


depended on intensive clouting as much as much as on the wheeze. 


But in Germany too, the pompous period began in the theatre, and the clown 


was relegated to the sidewalk as a mere vagabond entertainer of bumpkins and 


children. 


At the beginning of the Eighteenth Century clowning came into favor again in 
England in the shape of harlequinades at the Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields 
theatres. The most popular harlequin of the time was John Rich whose father 
built Covent Garden in 1732. Harlequin, descended directly from Arlechinno, or 
even from the Roman Bucco, became a fixture in English pantomime and extra- 


vaganza. 


The character of the modern circus clown was originated by Joe Grimaldi who 
was born in London in 1778. Joe was the illegitimate son of Giuseppi Grimaldi, 
better known as “Iron Legs”, a pantomime dancer of great ability, and Mrs. Rebecca 
Drucker, a dancer at Drury Lane. The child was literally shoved on the stage at the 
age of three in the role of a monkey. Trained with the utmost rigor and severity he 
appeared regularly with his father at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. After the death of 
his father, which took place in Joe’s eleventh year, and which left the family in 
extreme poverty, the youngster worked in pantomime for exceedingly meager wages. 
By his twentieth year he was well up the climb to the top of his profession. He 
became the star of Drury Lane and the idol of London. His greatness was due 
chiefly to his inexhaustible inventiveness. Much of the business he originated is used 
with but little modification by clowns today. A great many myths and legends have 
been attached to Grimaldi. It is told of him, as it is of most great clowns, that in 
his dying hours he rallied himself long enough to indulge in a last exhibition of buf- 
foonery. This and other sob stories are utterly disposed of by Charles Dickens who, 
under the name of Boz, edited Grimaldi’s memoires. The book itself, while fairly 
veracious, is dull and long-winded. It reveals a Grimaldi as vain and cheap as a 
retired bank director. Dickens sadly botched the editorial job, for which he proffers 


lame excuses in his apologetic preface. 


Grimaldi had so many followers and imitators that he appears as the founder of 
a school. He had created the turn of the comic acrobat who does stunts of great dif- 
ficulty which at the same time seem maladroit. Auriol was the first French clown of 
the Grimaldi type. He was a mime, juggler, but chiefly a comic acrobat. Mazurier 
was another of the versatile clowns of the early Nineteenth Century in France. And 
then there was Jocko who was so known because he was made up as a monkey. He 
would leap and climb about the balconies, making perilous swings, but tempering 


them with irresistible drolleries. 


However, for a long period, England was the nursery of clowning. The great 
Italian tradition of buffoonery which derived from earliest Roman days, received a 
very special direction in England, chiefly because Anglo-Saxon audiences were so 
hard-boiled. The Italian volubility was tempered and restrained, stripped to sure-fire 
essentials, and the acrobatic side emphasized more than ever before. The naive 
British public always admired feats of bodily strength and skill more than subtlety and 
wit. Edmond de Goncourt and Hugues Le Roux in their writings about clowns, see 
in all this a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon love of brutality and force, and a rather far- 
fetched sense of satire which is quite different from the Italian spirit. At any rate, 
England undoubtedly produced the best clowns of the Nineteenth Century. From 
England came Billy Hayden, Lavater Lee, the Hanlon-Lees, Tony Grice, Bip, and 
the delightful Footit. 


Footit was the son of a clown. He started life as a bareback rider but soon 
worked into the clown game. He perfected a crystalized grin that became his best 


laugh getter. Footit represents a type of English clown far removed from the Grimaldi 














OU prene 


find wa 


Joe Grimaldi in a Harlequinade 
Drawing by George Cruikshank 


character. Though Grimaldi used many spoken jokes, his principal business was 
comic acrobatics. Footit steadily worked in the opposite direction, and at the height 
of his greatness, he had entirely discarded acrobatics. He was one of the best 


examples of the clown parleur who through conversation establishes intimate contact 


with the audience. 





Footit and Chocolate 
(From a drawing owned by Mme Footit) 


One of the authentic stories about Footit is the tale of how he discovered his © 
partner. One day, on leaving the circus, he was approached by a down and out 
negro, a valet who had been left stranded by a traveling actor. He was much 
impressed by the black man’s droll facial expression and decided that he was good 
arena material. Due in part to Footit’s careful training, the negro soon became 


famous under the nom de cirque of Chocolate. 


Upon his death a few years ago, Footit was succeeded by his son Tommy 
Footit, a clever enough clown, but minus the old fellow’s touch of greatness.. Choco- 
late, by the way, was also succeeded by a son who is the droll and original Chocolat 
Fils, considered by many critics to be the best contemporary clown parleur, and at the 


moment paired with the clever Porto at the Cirque Medrano. 


It is a commonplace that clowning runs in families. Perhaps this is more the 
case with acrobats than with any other class of entertainers. However, our exhaustive 
and painstaking researches incidental to the compiling of this tremendous tome con- 
vince us that this family stuff is true, whoever says it. Pierre Mariel argues that to 
become a real clown one must have inhaled circus odors in one’s youth. Practically 
every first-rate clown began training at an age when other youngsters were candidates 


for initiation into the Holy Order of Boy Scouts. 


George Jean Nathan once remarked that “all children are natural actors—save 
nine-tenths of those on the stage”. We are wholeheartedly agin clowning by 
children ; our protest is not actuated by sentimentality or respect for the Child Labor 
Laws, but by the stupidity of infantile comedy. By all means let the Fratellinis train 
their young hopefuls to carry on, but let the public appearances of the kids be put off 


till their elders are too feeble to roll about in the sawdust. 


Up till lately all the circus infanterie received certain standardized training in 


the fundamentals of acrobatics, dancing, and the playing of different musical instru- 


ments. Their apprenticeship was long, trying, and often dangerous. The purpose of 
all this was the inculcation of the grace and self-confidence that would insure an easy 
demeanor in the ring. In this day of specialization and novelty in the circus, there are 
too many mushroom entertainers whose very entrances and exits betray a lamentable 
lack of general training. But in the circus there has never been a special course of 
training for clowns, no correspondence school standardization. The clown should 
present a synthesis of all the elements of the circus. The good clown is an acrobat, a 
juggler, a prestidigitator, a musician, and above all a good comedian ; because of this 


true versatility he dares burlesque these various accomplishments. 


A clown is either first-rate or a dead flop. There is no such thing as a mediocre 
clown. There is nothing more painful to watch than bum comedy. It is Monsieur — 
Bergson’s opinion that one might compare a good clown to those caricatures which 
are reduced to a few lines and a touch of color, but which despite their simplicity are 


truer than photographs. 


Pierre Mariel has written: “A good clown caricatures his fellow men; a great 
one parodies himself. He juggles with ridicule the way St. Denis juggled his head. 
The clown moves about like a knight on a chessboard: his actions like his dialogue 
are a series of jumps : his spirit makes more sautes perileux than his body.” Theo- 
dore de Banville wrote: “Between the adjectives possible and impossible, the mime 
has made his choice. He chose impossible. It is in the impossible that he trains 


himself. That which is impossible is that which he performs.” 














ini 


Alberto Fratell 


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Perhaps one of the factors in clown success is the gratification of the childhood 
wish of the spectator. Many of the prize dreams of childhood are accomplished by 
the clown before one’s very eyes: the breaking of vast quantities of crockery ; the 
wholesale swallowing of enormous pastries; the discomfiting of policeman and 
other such pompous asses; and the burlesqueing of parents, classic dancers and mus- 


icians, strong men, and other pretentious bores. 


The tremendous stylization in costume and makeup serves to isolate the clown, 
making him sufficiently impersonal to indulge in great license. He becomes an abstract 
symbol. The whitening or blackening of the face serves as a protection somewhat in 
the manner of the domino of the Renaissance ; at that period the person so disguised 
could almost literally get away with murder. Unwritten law has accorded the mas- 
que many special privileges and exemptions. Abuse eventually called forth written 
laws strictly forbidding the use of the masque outside of the theatre. Almost without 


exception, clowns have appreciated their special position and have seldom overstepped. 


The iconoclasm of the clown has often through ridicule brought about the down- 
fall of the tin gods who thrive on dignity. The Charlie Chaplin Bullfighters in Spain 
are causing a severe slump in the stock of the local toreadors, matadors, picadors, ste- 
vedores, and other professional heroes. If they prove, as they are threatening to do, 
that bullfighting is less dangerous than lacrosse, basketball, and such like minor and 
major pastimes, the ancient Carthaginian sport will soon follow the path of the Bunny 
Hug and the high-wheel bycycle. 


The woman clown is almost non-existent in the history of the profession. At 


the present day, Loulou the parleur who is teamed with the august Atoff, is about the 


only one of importance. America is familiar with the woman low comedian of the 
type of Marie Dressler and Kate Elinor. But in general our musical comedy tradition 
allows the woman to appear ridiculous for no more than two acts, after which she 
emerges in a blaze of contrasting elegance, as for example Mizzi Hajos in Sari and 
Charlotte Greenwood in Letty. 


Clowns are the greatest users of sure-fire stuff, comedy that has been tried and 
tested throughout the ages. The oldest hokum is employed to give the spectator a 
feeling of superiority, such as the exhibition of a clumsiness and stupidity far sur- 
passing similar virtues in the worst dumbell in the audience, and being the victims 
of practical jokes which every simpleton among the pewholders would like to per- 


petrate. 


But if there are ambitious ones among the audience who think they would like 
to sport about in the arena we bid them pause and reflect that it really has a painful 
side. One of the most persistent myths attached to the clown business is that the blows 
delivered, while apparently lusty, are in some mysterious fashion rendered entirely 
harmless to the receiver. The left cheek of almost every veteran clown is as hard 
and dry as parchment from the constant reception of blows, and sometimes even one 


eye is a bit out of plumb. The retail clothing business shouldn't be safer, but it is. 


The outstanding types among present-day clowns are the speaker (classic white- 
faced clown), the grotesque, the august, the contra-august and the elegant. The 
august and the speaker were accidental creations, the first resulting from the drunken 


actions of a circus stableman, and the second because of the illness of a regular clown 


and the consequent substitution of an interlocutory personage. The elegant is a 
typical European circus character, generally presented as a ringmaster, immaculately 
and faultlessly attired, and unbelievably dignified until a sudden slapstick clout puts 
him on his back. Mr. Gilbert Seldes, writing in Vanity Fair for July 1923, errone- 
ously refers to M. Lucien Godart, elegant at the Cirque Medrano as an august. 

Perhaps the finest example of an august that we ever had in America was the Charlie 
Chaplin of the music hall and early cinema days. Big feet and ill-fitting clothing 
are important characteristics in the getup of an august. It is interesting to speculate 
on what might have happened to Chaplin if he hadn’t found a medium in the 
movies. Cicuses in America, stemming from the achievements of that immortal boob- 
catcher P.T.Barnum, grew to such proportions that individual clowns were swamped. 
A great deal of slush was recently spilled over the death of the veteran American 
clown, Al Miaco ; it is a question as to whether the blurbers had ever been able to 
distinguish Miaco from his confreres in a three-ring circus which boasted a score of 


clowns. 


Few of the younger generation in America know the one-ring circus. True, 
there are still a few traveling the bush circuits. But even before the advent of the 
movie, the small circus was become as unprofitable venture, and there was a tendency 
toward combination in fruitless endeavor to complete with the half dozen “Greatest 
Shows on Earth”. On the Continent, particularly in France, the cirque intime has 
never lost in popularity and is today more strongly entrenched than ever. Paris 
boasts four permanent small circuses, the Cirque de Paris, Cirque d’ Hiver, Nouveau 


Cirque, and Cirque Medrano. 


The cirque intime has many and obvious advantages. There is never more than 


one act in the ring at a time, though as the acts are changing half a dozen minor 





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Heuzé’s autobiography, presented above with his self-portrait, is warmly 
endorsed by the authors of this book as a masterpiece of brevity. Consider it in 
comparison with the long-winded self-histories of ex-ambassadors and politicians 


_ which constitute such a large proportion of America’s recent literary output. 


clowns rush noisily about and officiously help the canvasmen. As all the action is 
visible from every point in the house, it must of necessity be entertainment of a calibre 
that will bear such close scrutiny. This is particularly true of the clown acts. In- 
stead of the confused antics and tumblings of bespangled figures lost in the kalei- 
doscope of three rings and five stages, the single small arena produces definite indivi- 
dualistic comiques of the class of Charlie Chaplin. In Paris, the Fratellinis, Charlie, 
Frank Pichel, Coco, Chocolat, Porto, are familiar names. In a three-ring show, 
swamped by numbers and visible only to small sections of the house, these excellent 


mimes would be at a tremendous disadvantage. ‘The cirque intime permits them a 





Coco, Cyerillo (recently deceased), 
and Charley of the Cirque de Paris 





wide range of buffoonery and indulgence in slapstick subtleties that would be lost in a 


larger arena. 


A good concrete example of the stifling of an excellent clown in a mammoth 
show was the submerging of Marceline in the early days of the New York Hippo- 
drome. Fine mime though he was, the sheer magnitude of the structure as well as 
the great number of people employed on the stage at the same time, reduced him to 
the position of just one of many entertainers. Where one person went to laugh at 
Marceline, nine went because the Hippodrome was the largest showhouse in New 
York. Grock is another case in point. His quick and subtle changes of expression 
are lost in a very big playhouse. Or to prove it the other way, imagine Balieff, who is 
an excellent clown parleur, trying to establish contact with a mammoth audience and in 
such a large auditorium as say, the Metropolitan Opera House. On a big stage the 
clown ceases to be a clown parleur and must of necessity depend on fundamental 
slapstickery, or specialities as the Arnaut Brothers depended on their whistling, or on 


spectacular entrance such as Al Miaco achieved through the use of stilts. 





Drawing by Heuzé 


Several of the Paris clowns have attained such popularity that they are forced to 


alternate music-hall work with their regular nightly circus performances. 


We assure all our readers, if any, who have resolutely ploughed through these 
pages, that we have not had the slightest intention of compiling a Wellsian outline of 
clowns. The only purposes of this extended essay have been the presentation of a very 
sketchy picture of clowning at various periods, the upsetting of a few myths, and the 
airing of the prejudices and opinions of two ardent believers in slapstickery. The slight 
attention we have given anecdotes about clowns argues a fine restraint on our part. 
Clowns, more than any other class of entertainers, are heavily afflicted with anec- 


dotage. For your further satisfaction we herewith append an admirable bibliography. 





Drawing by Heuzé 


p eur =. - 2 Ss, Pe 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


History of Caricature, by Thomas Wright. 
Le Cirque et la Vie Foraine, par Hugues Le Roux et Jules Garnier. 
Les Freres Zemganno, par Edmund de Goncourt. 

| History of Theatrical Art, by Dr. Karl Mantzius. 
Memoirs of Grimaldi, edited by “Boz”. 
Histoire des Trois Clowns (Les Fratellinis), par Pierre Mariel. 
Dictionnaire du Thédtre F rancais. 


Circus Life, by Thomas Frost. 





Au Music Hall, par Gustave Frejaville. 


: we Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini. 
Ga 


a _ Hiler, Theater und Balletenkunst, von Dr. Otto Gehrig, 


i 
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PRINTED IN PARIS BY 
THE LECRAM PRESS 















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